


why am i alive?

by kwritten



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 18:31:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4190466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laurel becomes the Black Canary during a time of mourning - it's just that she can no longer remember what she is mourning for</p>
            </blockquote>





	why am i alive?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [csichick_2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/csichick_2/gifts).



There is a slip of black cloth against her skin that feels heavy, it weighs her down, making each step harder, each action more restrained. She wrinkles her nose and thinks of the time she tried on her father’s reading glasses, the way they fit heavy and solid on the bridge of her nose. This feels a bit like that, like dancing around the living room in her mother’s heels. A sense that she is pretending to be bigger and better and braver than she is. 

“Fake it ‘till you believe it,” a professor smiles down at her. Law School is a lot of faking it until everyone else believes it, faking until the only person in the room who isn’t sure is you. 

And so she faked it. 

Into courtrooms and jobs and charity events. (She thought maybe she was even faking it when she heard Oliver tell her he loved her and she believed it. She thought maybe it was possible to fake believing… so much so that you didn’t even know you were doing it.) She faked it until she believed it. 

It’s funny how you can lie to yourself. 

Funny how you can lie to yourself about things that don’t even really matter in the end. 

Like that your father will someday pull himself off a barstool, that your mother will come home, that your sister is alive, that saving the world of all its ills will somehow mean that you are saved. 

 

( _Why are you alive why are YOU alive whyareyoualive_.)

 

She likes the feel of her skin around her knuckles cracking and bleeding. Likes the way her fingers tell one story and her designer heels tell another. Likes the way cashiers raise their eyebrows when she hands them her debit card but don’t say a word. It makes her feel smug, that flicker of fear that passes over their faces. The way they whisper to their co-workers when she carries her bags out to her car without assistance. It makes her feel smug, that flicker of fear that passes over their faces. The way they whisper to their co-workers when she carries her bags out to her car without assistance. (She remembers a Laurel that let boys with acne across of the bridge of their nose push her cart and load her trunk with her weekly allowance of Greek yogurt and diet Coke.) She likes knowing that there’s a secret in her breast that doesn’t smell like sour tequila or burn like a broken heart. 

(Her heart is still broken, but these days she likes it that way. These days it pushes her forward instead of dragging her down and so she clings to it like a child stubbornly refusing to part with their favorite toy at bedtime. Sometimes they look at her as if they are thinking about taking it away, falling in love with her over drinks or telling her a joke that makes her laugh until her sides hurt and something inside heals.)

Her heart is still broken, but it doesn’t burn the way it used to, like it was fueling a fire that at any moment might devour her whole. Now she is the fire and it’s better that way. 

Maybe it will hurt more in the end, to be the thing that devours. Maybe when the world is in smoldering crumbles at her feet she will feel regret and mourn for the heart she never let heal in the proper way. Maybe she should let her heart burn out and rebuild it from the ashes that fall gently into her lungs and make every breath feel like a betrayal. ( _Why are you alive why are YOU alive whyareyoualive_.)

And then she laughs and thinks _fuck it_.  
It won’t matter by then anyway.

( _Why did you survive why did YOU survive whydidyousurvive_ )

 

She lets them think that it is her addiction, lets them look on with unbelieving eyes and give her good advice. She gets angry because she is always angry these days. There is a coldness to her anger now that sometimes makes her drag her finger along her clit in the night and pant out for no reason whatsoever than to just feel _heat_ slipping beneath her fingers. She remembers a boy with bright eyes and he was full of warmth. He died. She remembers a sister who was full of light. She died. She doesn’t remember what being warm feels like, but she thinks maybe if they were still here, she’d have a chance. 

They say she is mourning.  
She says she is living. 

(Maybe that is the same thing in the end. Maybe the thing she is mourning is her life.)

( _Why are you alive why are YOU alive whyareyoualive_.)

 

A bullet whizzes past her ear and she’s known for the past five minutes that she has lost. She kicks and scratches and there is nothing elegant in her movements, she’s just holding onto consciousness for dear life. 

( _Why are you alive why are YOU alive whyareyoualive_.)

 

 

_Am I alive?_

There’s a gravestone that was a joke. It’s right in the center of her heart and it has a name dug deep into its curves that spells out a history and a mystery and so many unknowns she’s likely to never understand it completely. There’s a gravestone that is more real than it ought to be and she stands over it in an outfit that isn’t hers wearing a mask that is ill-fitting and there’s a bruise covering half her working limbs and a bloody wound deep inside where no one can see. 

 

Maybe she had a death wish. 

Or maybe they both did. 

 

( _Why are you alive why are YOU alive whyareyoualive_.)

 

Someday, maybe, someone will ask her why she does it. The wig and the mask and the lipstick. Does it fit right? Does it feel right to wear the clothes of a dead sister and fight the war of a once-dead lover? 

Was it ever her war at all?

She’ll just smile. 

Because it doesn’t matter _why_ she fights. 

 

It matters that she is still fighting. 

 

( _You are alive you ARE alive YOUAREALIVE._ )

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoy this! It was a real treat to have the opportunity to tackle Laurel's feelings about becoming the Black Canary <3333


End file.
